1. Field of the Invention
This application claims priority to Chinese Application Serial Number 201030705094.5 filed on Dec. 31, 2011, and incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The present invention relates to devices for stripping the insulating jacket from electrical wire. More specifically, the invention relates to a self adjusting wire stripping device for industrial employment, especially in recycling, wherein tensioned cutting blades are employed for cutting the insulating jacket from large amounts of wire being recycled and which automatically adjust to proper cutting for stripping as the elongated wire passes through it.
2. Prior Art
In order to protect the environment from over-use of raw materials, in the modern world many countries encourage recycling of prior-refined materials. In the case of products formed of metals from mining, such recycling saves huge amounts of energy required to mine the metal ore, as well as to refine it and extrude a metal product. In the case of wire and cable formed of copper and aluminum, the savings are substantial in energy as well as in reducing the amount of mining and tailings and other environmental concerns which result from mining. Further, the carbon savings resulting from eliminating the huge amount of electrical energy which employed in refining, and mechanical energy required for mining, is substantial.
In the recycling business, many recycling facility yards offer money in exchange for the metal inside new or used wire and cable presented for recycling. In the case of insulated cable and wire, conventionally, consumers and businesses desiring to recycle such wire or cable are given two choices for presenting the wire or cable to the recycle yard. As a first option, the consumer or business may present the wire or cable ‘as is’, still in the conventional insulating jacket. The second choice is to present the wire or cable as the bare metal where the insulating jacket is removed. As could be imagined, many recycling yards will offer considerably more money for bare metal wire and cable since removal of the insulating jacket, which is generally not recycled, involves a substantial labor and energy cost to the buying recycler. The increase in revenue can be substantial, and consequently, the desire to strip the insulating jacket of wire is therefor considerable.
As a conventional solution, many users will attempt to strip the wires by hand, employing a hand held wire stripper device or possibly a razorblade. The insulation being flexible plastic adheres to the axially running wire and is designed to remain so adhered. Consequently, it takes much effort to slice a side of the insulation down to the cable and then peel off the jacket from the wire center. However, should the user have a considerable length of wire or multiple wires, the hand held method is far too time consuming and tiring. Further stripping by hand can be very dangerous since the blade employed by nature must be very sharp to cut the plastic to the wire core.
Another solution involves the employment of wire stripping devices wherein the wire or cable is drawn over a cutting blade. The blade in such a device is positioned to cut through the insulating jacket surrounding the wire only, therefor allowing the jacket to be split along the cut line and then removed without severing the metal wire. For these devices, the disposition and positioning of the cutting blade to only slice the plastic jacket, requires that the covered wire and other wire feeding components be carefully determined and then positioned relative to the cutting blade, for each size and wire type used. If the blade does not cut deep enough, the jacket cannot be removed, and if the blade cuts too deep, the metal wire may be severed which stops the automatic action while the wire must be re-feed into the device thereby wasting additional time and effort.
Current conventionally employed and available manual wire stripping devices employ manual user-adjusted components and methods to adjust the position of the plastic jacket slicing blade in order to properly cut through the wire jacket. These methods are time-consuming especially when changing between different size wires, as each diameter wire type will require different adjustment depending on the plastic jacket thickness and the diameter of the axially running wire. Problems also often occur when initially feeding the wire into the blade.
As such, there is a continuing unmet need for an improved wire stripping device. Such a device should be easy to use and allow the user to strip varying sized and shaped wires and allow for self-positioning of a plurality of sizes of incoming wire with different wire diameters and plastic jacket thicknesses while requiring little or no adjustment to the device.